Challenging obesity - Dying for a pizza is just plain stupid

EVEN though the evidence that too many Irish people, especially young people, are obese is unavoidable, some milestones along this road towards poor health, sedentary, unhappy lives still have the capacity to shock. Or at least they should have.

Today’s report that a fifth of our children have become so terribly oversized that they have to wear extraordinarily large clothes to make their First Communion is one of those moments.

Some eight-year-old girls have to wear dresses with a circus-proportion 48-inch chest for the ceremony. Boys that age sometimes need trousers with waistbands of 38 inches. These are our children, little more than infants in age, but they are struggling with sumo-sized bodies.

This represents parental and social failure on so many fronts that it must be tackled if this epidemic is not to become a bigger killer than smoking.

Creating the conditions and habits that preclude a child from leading a full life, of availing of so many opportunities, is wrong. If children were so abused in any other way parents could expect a day in court but we are so numbed on this that we look the other way.

We are not the only country trying to get to grips with this epidemic. A paper in this month’s Scientific American warns that if trends continue obesity will soon surpass smoking as the biggest single factor in early death, reduced quality of life and added health care costs. Already a third of Americans are obese.Another third are overweight.

Irish figures are less disturbing though we are quickly catching up. Almost a fifth of Irish people — 18% — are obese and 39% are overweight. Irish men are fourth in Europe’s obesity league. More than one-in-five of our seven to 12 year-olds are obese. We have recorded a 30% increase in obesity since 2007. Obesity accounts for over 2,500 deaths here every year.

Of course if it was easy to lose weight none of this would be an issue. Weight loss, or at least the aspiration to lose weight, has become a huge industry. This industry is sometimes terribly exploitative and not always ethical. Diets do not work for most people over an extended period and two-thirds of dieters weigh more two years after they began dieting than they did when they started. Weight loss is not an insurmountable challenge but it is very difficult to sustain. Far better to develop eating and exercise habits that mean being overweight will never be an issue.

As virtually every report shows a proper diet and regular exercise are the best way to manage this issue. The skills needed to prepare simple, healthy, value-for-money meals may need to be re-emphasised in our schools, communities and homes as well.

Fast, fatty foods are a huge part of the problem and maybe we should take the gloves off to protect our children — and ourselves — by making it harder for food companies to sell junk food. Of course this will lead to all the usual nanny state accusations but maybe it’s time to show the same regard for the sector of our food industry fuelling this epidemic as they show for our society’s health. Life, even if it is challenging, is far too good to squander for the transient pleasure of a Coke and the questionable pleasure of a frozen pizza.